seminolewar

Update

I was down for a little over a week with some ailments, but am feeling much better tonight. So much so that I went into town and watched a movie. (Fantastic 4-Silver Surfer.) I haven't been to town in a couple weeks except to go to the doctor. I found out why I was short of breath; it was the partially collapsed lung. The shingles are behaving themselves better thanks to my friend the Cherokee herbal lady. And the swelling in my feet went down enough that I could put my shoes on after about 4 days. It sucks getting old. My medical insurance must think I am milking them for all they're worth.

Some really nasty thunder clouds are getting closer, so let me say a few things before I sign off.

The Florida state parks are dropping the fee for overnight camping for youth and scout groups. It will be $1 per kid and $2 per adult per night. Over the past few years it had gone up so much that it was cheaper to stay in the full facility camping area than the primitive group area. So now it is at a more reasonable rate.

Mom sent me an article from the newspaper. Looks like there are a lot of black reenactors getting involved at Olustee. That is great--we are getting a lot more diverse group, and better representative of the history. The 54th Mass. took a big part in the battle, and it is great to see them involved.

The Ocala forest had a big clean-up this weekend. I have never understood why people would dump huge mountains of trash out there. It is a darn shame. You don't go to Yellowstone and see people dump mountains of trash, abandon cars, abandon boats, and numerous appliances. I don't know why they want to do it in the nation's oldest national forest here in Florida.

I always wondered why Fort Fanning was not right at the spring head. The spring area makes a perfect harbor and landing for the boats. I found out the answer. It was because the fort was guarding the river crossing. Where the fort overlooked the river, the bluff where the crossing was use to be a lot more narrow. In most cases where you had a ferry crossing at the river, they would do it at a narrow spot. Less work to get across if it is narrow. When they built highway 98, it seems they took those narrow bluffs to fill in for the modern highway bridge.

Yes Chris, I thought the same thing about the placement of the fort when I went there a couple of weeks ago until I say the bluffs. I didn't make it across to the actual site (hope to do that in a few days) but since I live less than an hour south of there, I'll be there more than a few times I'm sure. =Ross Lamoreaux, 4th US Infy, etc

I was just there at Fanning Springs last week and one of the rangers and I looked around at a few things. Give me a call at the park this weekend; I am working in the ranger station and not too much traffic is going on this time of year. 239-877-8457. This is one of the most signifcant Seminole war fort sites, and you will be amazed at what I tell you. But, since we are trying to preserve the area for any future archaeological surveys, I don't want to publish any of that here to protect the integrity of the site. So give me a call.

Oh yeah, the ticks are really bad out there. I hit a few pods of seed ticks, and if I had not been wearing light colored trousers, I would not have seen them because they were as small as specks of dust. I jumped in that spring real fast afterwards.